Symbiosis
by ExpositionFairy
Summary: Flynn and Clu aren't the only User and Program to share a bond.
1. Night Terrors

_There isn't anywhere left to run._

He's stalked her, chased her through the empty Encom parking tower for what seems like hours. She's made him work for it. She's smart and resourceful and she knows all the exits, all the ins and outs of this darkened labyrinth, but the main gate is barricaded, all the elevators have been shut down, all the stairwell doors locked and barred. He's watched her bang against them, cursing in frustration. Watched as she changed her tactics to evasion rather than escape, going silent, slipping into shadows. She's good at this, too. Good at conserving her energy, blending into her environment, at making herself nearly invisible. Against anyone else, it might even have worked.

Not him.

He knows her, has been connected to her for so long that he can feel her in the background of his mind as if they were linked by some sort of strange telepathy, and she can't hide from him. She's cornered.

He moves in closer to where she stands, boxed in between the concrete wall and one of the support pillars. The blue lightbulb marking one of the in-case-of-emergency phones on the wall beside her casts her features in an eerie light and makes the white lines of the parking stalls on the floor seem to glow. He's close enough to see her expression now and it's awful, a mix of fear and defiance and a terrible sadness. Why is she looking at him that way?

Lora_, he tries to say, tries to reach out to her, but no sound comes out of him and his hands won't move._

There's a noise in here, a constant ticking grumble in the background. She looks up at him, straight at him, and she's trying to speak too but her words are lost in the white noise and he can't figure out where the hell it's coming from_… now she's reaching a hand toward _him_, and he feels his fingers twitch toward her in response…_

Footsteps, behind them.

Lora's hand drops, clenching into a fist. Her expression changes, brows drawing together, eyes darkening. It's anger he's seeing on her face now, rage_, but it isn't him she's looking at anymore. He wants to look behind him but he still can't move, and when he snarls in frustration that stuttering growl rises a notch._

He's not yours_, she says, although he can't hear the words._

There's an answering chuckle from whoever's behind him, a presence he can feel_, now, as if he were standing next to a furnace. Then it speaks, and there's no trouble making out _these_ words, oh no. They cut through the noise like a drill._

**Well? What the hell are you waiting for?**__

And suddenly just like that he's moving, moving faster than he's ever moved in his life, muscles obeying commands he never gave them, and there're two objects like bladed rings in his hands, edges glowing the delicate red-white of metal that's no more than a few degrees from turning molten and beginning to drip.

He strikes her, and she shatters like glass.

Then it's over and he simply stands there, strange weapons still in hand and humming, staring dumbly down at the pile of gleaming fragments. In his mind he's screaming, over and over again he's screaming her name, but he hears nothing but that grinding, grating flickering noise as a strong arm wraps around him from behind…

"Alan!"

The arm around him tightens, pulls him flush against a warm body. He's shaking and hyperventilating and for a moment he doesn't know where he is, tries to struggle against the hold.

"Alan, stop! You're all right, shhh, wake up, it's okay…"

Lora.

He opens his eyes.

"Breathe, Alan," she soothes, and he does, blinking as she turns on the lamp on the night table. He's at home, in his own bed, with Lora real and warm and alive behind him, rubbing his back worriedly.

He turns to look at her, wanting to reassure her that he's alright, but when he tries to speak no sound comes out and all he can do is lock his arms around her and wait for his heart to stop pounding.


	2. Shatter

**_Well? What the hell are you waiting for?_**

_And suddenly just like that he's moving, moving faster than he's ever moved in his life, muscles obeying commands he never gave them, and there're two objects like bladed rings in his hands, edges glowing the delicate red-white of metal that's no more than a few degrees from turning molten and beginning to drip._

_He strikes her, and she shatters like glass._

_Then it's over and he simply stands there, strange weapons still in hand and humming, staring dumbly down at the pile of gleaming fragments. In his mind he's screaming, over and over again he's screaming her name, but he hears nothing but that grinding, grating flickering noise as a strong arm wraps around him from behind…_

* * *

Rinzler is glitching.

He must be. There's been some kind of skip in his processes; he tries to run back through the last few hundred frames of memory, but they're warped and fragmented. What had he been doing? A local area scan tells him he's in the Undercity, and he can see the remains of a derezzed Program at his feet, glimmering weakly as the last of its residual energy fades. He'd been hunting, then...but hunting who?

[_Yori. That was Yori._]

[_...designation "Yori" unknown. Who is Yori?_]

[_Yori no oh no this isn't happening no no no YORI-_]

Except it's _not_ Yori. It can't be. Yori is behind him, her arm wrapped around his chest, circuits burning warm against his own. He can hear her whispering to him through the static of corrupted data. [_...you're alright, shh, wake up, it's okay..._]

"Well done, Rinzler," purrs the voice from behind him, and Yori's voice shatters, the way she shattered under his discs. "_My_ Rinzler."

[_ERROR_]

A picosecond's hitch in Rinzler's growl is all the warning Clu gets.

He manages to snap his head back just barely in time to avoid decapitation as Rinzler suddenly twists within his hold, the blazing edge of his left-hand disc carving a sparking gash along Clu's cheekbone. He plants his foot into Rinzler's thigh and kicks him away as hard as he can, but he still has only a split second to draw his own disc before Rinzler is on him again, the blows coming hard and fast and nearly feral in their intensity.

It's all Clu can do to keep up. He's bigger, more powerfully built than Rinzler, but Rinzler is much, much faster, and the fury of his assault isn't letting up. Clu had almost forgotten what it was like to have all that power and speed and skill pointed at _him_, and he feels his own rage starting to bubble to the surface. Rinzler is his, dammit, _his_. Never in a hundred cycles had he expected this kind of reaction, this fracturing of his perfect, painstaking programming, and irrationally he wishes that Yori were alive again so he could tear her apart himself.

He drops low beneath a wide swing, attempting to sweep Rinzler's legs out from under him, but Rinzler simply sidesteps neatly and then drops on him like a stone, bringing one disc hammering down at him in a move that Clu remembers all too well. He throws himself to the side and Rinzler's disc crashes into the floor, embedding itself there and kicking up sparks. Rinzler yanks it free. It only takes a fraction of a second, but it's enough for Clu to scramble to his feet and before Rinzler can turn again Clu is halfway behind him, slamming an open-handed palm strike into the empty disc port on Rinzler's back.

It's a dirty blow, but it does the trick. Rinzler utters a strangled, distorted cry and falls forward, one disc skidding off across the slick floor. Clu immediately drops a knee into the small of his back, pinning him, and twists his other arm up and away from his body until he releases his grip on the second disc.

"_Enough_," Clu hisses, laying his free hand flat on Rinzler's disc port in order to access his code directly and force a hard shutdown. Rinzler's struggles immediately still and he goes limp, circuits dimming from flames to cinders.

His last thought, before shutdown takes him, is Yori's name.

* * *

When Rinzler comes back online he's lying on his side, on Clu's oversized bed. The Admin is siting beside him, Rinzler's reintegrated disc in his lap, one hand sorting delicately through the code projecting from it while the other cards absently through Rinzler's hair.

His memory is glitched. Why had he shut down?

A cursory self-scan reveals no serious injuries, but his back aches miserably, and he can see the fading, glimmering remains of a disc gouge just beneath Clu's left eye. Something must have gone wrong...had he failed to protect Clu, somehow? His brow furrows in confusion and he tries again to pull up the memory files of the mission they must surely have been on.

[_ERROR_]

Rinzler's stuttering rumble intensifies in frustration and Clu glances over at him, smiling lazily. "Relax," Clu drawls. "The mission was a success. There was...a little glitch, but you're fine now. Everything's just fine."

That's all he needs. He shifts closer to his Admin, closing his eyes, broken growl dropping once again to a low, steady hum.

"_My_ Rinzler," Clu whispers, and Rinzler curls against him in response.


	3. In Absentia

1995

By the time Alan and Lora make it to the bar, Roy's already there, wedged into a corner table and well into his second drink, by the look of it. It's not their fault they're late; traffic on the 405 coming back from the courthouse was an utter bitch, but seeing Roy sitting there alone makes Alan's heart twist guiltily just the same. He hopes it hasn't been too long.

"I'll go order us something," Lora murmurs, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, and walks up to the bar. Alan nods and watches her for a moment before heading over to Roy's table.

"Hey, Roy."

Roy looks up from his drink. He's still in his work clothes, though they're a bit rumpled now, and his face is slightly flushed from the alcohol, but that doesn't do anything to hide the bags under his eyes. "…hey."

For a moment, neither of them can find anything else to say. It's been a long, grueling, miserable year for all of them. The situation at Encom turns uglier by the month. Lora's department has already been slashed. A sweeping new wave of layoffs has been proposed by the Board; Alan knows Roy and his team are on the list and although he's fighting tooth and nail for them, he has the sinking feeling that it isn't going to do a bit of good in the end. Then of course there's Sam, fourteen years old and more than his grandmother can handle. The long nights, the crazy nightmares, all three of them worn down to the bone trying to hold onto what they've got left.

None of those things, though, are the reason they're here, today, in this bar. Except maybe they are, because what happened today really sums up everything.

"…it's official?" Roy asks finally, breaking the silence, and Alan nods wearily.

"Yeah. It's official."

Today was the final hearing. The petition has been signed off on by the LA County judge. Declaration of Death in Absentia.

After seven years, Kevin Flynn has been declared legally dead.

Roy nods back, taking off his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there with you guys…I tried like hell to get out of work, you know, I should have been there but they're running my team into the ground and I…" His voice cracks and he can't finish.

"I know, Roy. Believe me. I know." He reaches out to settle a hand on Roy's shoulder. "It's alright. _I'm_ sorry it took Lora and I so goddamn long to get _here_, the traffic coming out of downtown was a nightmare…"

Roy waves it off. "It's fine. The waitress was very sweet. Kept asking me if I was okay." He attempts a crooked little smile. It only lasts a second. "How's Sam?" he asks.

"…as well as can be expected. Coping." Alan answers, his own voice tight now.

"Good. That's good. …fuck, no it isn't." Roy slumps, looking back down at the tabletop, at his half-finished vodka tonic, and whispers "What the hell are we going to do now…?"

Sweet, loyal, earnest little Roy Kleinberg, with his wisecracks and his awkward charm. Roy with his fierce devotion to his adopted family of friends and coworkers. Roy with his amazing, underappreciated talent for writing intuitive, efficient programs that performed far beyond what one would expect from his simple, streamlined coding.

Kevin Flynn had seen that talent in him almost immediately, nurtured it, given him the opportunity to be more than just another code monkey in Encom's cube farm. And now Flynn's gone, and Roy's going to lose his job, and it isn't fucking fair.

Alan squeezes Roy's shoulder, racking his mind for an answer that won't come. Roy's slump deepens and he sinks all the way to the tabletop, burying his face in the crook of his arm.

Lora returns, takes one look at the two of them, and sets the drinks down on the far side of the table across from them before moving to Alan and pressing herself quietly against his side. Alan's free arm wraps around her; the hand holding Roy's shoulder slips all the way around his back, and he pulls both of them against him, eyes squeezing shut against the tears suddenly burning them.

"We're going to make this right," he whispers to them, his lover and his comrade, his _partners, _the people he'd go to the ends of the earth for.

"One way or another, we're going to make this right."


	4. No Good Deed

_One question haunts and hurts, too much, too much to mention _

_Was I really seeking good, or just seeking attention? _

_Is that all good deeds are when looked at with an ice-cold eye? _

_If that's all good deeds are, maybe that's the reason why…_

* * *

Coming here is a risk.

He's taken all the precautions he can think of to take: parked his 'cycle well outside the edge of the city, rezzed up a loose cloak with a hood that obscures his face and false circuits that glow the airport-landing-strip blue of just another Basic, suppressed his own energy signature as best he can. He's even made sure to come on a night when the Games are being held, as much as it sickens him (_how many of my people are in there tonight_, he wonders, _being forced to tear each other apart in front of an audience_), knowing that much of downtown will be largely empty because of it. Even so, he's all too aware it's not really enough. He can feel Clu at the back of his mind, their link burning all the brighter for the increased proximity, and Flynn can only hope he'll remain distracted enough by the Games to let him slip past unnoticed.

He's already been out to the ruins of Bostrum, its soft green light long since burned out, ugly rotten gouges in its walls where the virus had eaten away at them like acid. He's still got the last remaining shards of Arjia's delicate glass towers back at his safehouse in the Outlands. There's only one place left to visit, one memory left to honor, and as far as Flynn's concerned it's worth every risk he's taking to see it done, even as it shreds his heart.

So thinking, he rounds the corner and steps into the three-way intersection.

It's like taking a sledgehammer straight to the chest, and all the cycles that have passed since that awful day have done nothing to soften the blow. Flynn has to fight back a surge of nausea as he remembers how _confident_ he was as he turned this same corner with Tron that day-confident that his new System Monitor would make Tron's job easier and that Radia would be able to help take some of the pressure off Clu and that everything was going to be okay.

_"Will you stop worrying so much, Tron? Everything's fine. Everything is under control."_

He kneels in the center of the intersection, swallowing against the nausea and the iron lump in his throat, and whispers "…greetings, Program."

He tries to continue, but he's vapor-locked. Night on night for cycles Flynn's thought about what he'd say, and now it all seems so hollow. But he's got to say _something_, dammit, he owes Tron that much, and so he simply murmurs the first words that come.

"…when we first met, you asked me if everything I did was according to a plan. You were so sure that that must be the way it was for Users, and I just…laughed. Laughed and tossed off some line about how you just gotta go with the flow, man, keep doing what you're doing even if it seems crazy, all that bullshit. And it was true, too, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. I never did." He runs a hand roughly through his hair, knocking his hood back some, but he doesn't care. "Youdid, though. You always knew what you were about, and yet for some goddamn reason you followed me anyway. And I…I let you down."

Flynn's eyes are burning now, and it's getting harder and harder to breathe, but he rambles on anyway, powerless to stop the flow of words now that they've started. "I wish you were here, man. You have no idea how much. I failed you all…you and Alan and my family and Clu and…" He chokes on a sob. "…you _died_ for me, man, and it wasn't worth it. _I_ wasn't worth it. And I'm sorry, man."

"I'm so fucking sorry."

He can't stay any longer. Already he's dangerously close to losing his hold on the necessary suppression of his energy, and if that happens Clu will zero in on him in an instant. He takes a shuddering breath and gets back to his feet to begin the long trek back out to his lightcycle, sticking to back ways and nodding dumbly to any passerby he happens to encounter. No-one marks him, and the part of Flynn that's still aware of his surroundings is distantly grateful for that.

He manages to make it all the way to the bike before collapsing against it, the sobs racking his body hard enough to physically hurt, burying his face in his hands.

* * *

_Let all be agreed, I'm wicked, through and through _

_Since I could not succeed, my friends, in saving you _

_I promise no good deed will I attempt to do again, ever again… _

_No good deed will I do again_

* * *

A/N: Lyrics quoted are from "No Good Deed", from the musical adaptation of Gregory Maguire's Wicked


	5. Have You Got it in You

_All at once; not a whisper, no word, then all at once _

_(Let me have it all, let me have a battle on, easy target look can we just get it over with) _

_It's getting worse; against all the odds, it's getting worse... _

_(Guard down, floor's yours, last man standing, can we just get it over with...?) _

_Been one of those days; safety first, don't push _

_(What's the hurry?) _

_One nerve remaining, waiting on one look _

_(Have you got it...?) _

_Have you got it in you?_

* * *

1996

* * *

_"We're the perfect team, you and I."_

_He's standing in front of the huge plate glass window in his office, looking out over the city below. Kevin is behind him, hands settled on Alan's hips, the touch making him gasp in a way it _shouldn't._ He wants to tell him to stop, ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing, but he's as mute in this dream as he is in all the other ones. Through the window can see the lights of helicopters stitching back and forth over LAX, the great searchlights sweeping the skies from Memorial Coliseum. It's those beams, bizarrely, that seem to fixate his attention, distracting Alan from his and his missing best friend's ghostly reflections in the glass._

_"I knew you had it in you, man," Kevin purrs, nuzzling into the back of his neck, and it's only then that Alan looks down and realizes his hands are covered in blood._

Lora wakes to the sound of the shower running and Alan's side of the bed empty—not unusual, for any given morning. But then she registers that the bedroom is still pitch dark, that the alarm clock on the nightstand reads 3:38, and the first warning bells begin to go off at the back of her mind.

"Alan?" she calls at the open bathroom door.

There's no answer, and Lora's unease grows. Alan has been sleeping badly for years, now, but in the last nine months or so it's gotten exponentially worse as the stress of their day-to-day lives mounts. Lora has lost count of the number of nights she's been awakened by his tossing and turning, caught in the grip of strange nightmares he either can't or won't talk about. Worse than that is the way they seem to affect him through the morning: the shakes, the way he starts at reflections, the way he sometimes seems to lose his voice upon waking.

She turns on the bedside lamp and steps out of bed, crossing the room to the bathroom and entering quietly. Alan's standing slumped beneath the spray, eyes closed, forehead resting against the wall beneath the showerhead. There's no steam.

"Alan, are you alright…?"

He turns slightly at the sound of her voice, but doesn't otherwise respond. Lora pulls the curtain aside and reaches in to touch his shoulder, and her worry blooms into outright dread.

"This water's _freezing_, Alan!"

Alan opens his mouth to speak, but once again seems to be unable to find words, so Lora does the only thing she can think of to do: she turns the water temperature up to warm and steps into the shower with him, wrapping herself tightly around his shivering body. She's still in her nightgown, but she couldn't possibly care less. All that matters to her is Alan, and the need to bring him back from whatever awful place his dream must have taken him.

"I'm here," she whispers into his back, squeezing his hands and fighting back tears at the way he jumps. "I'm here, it's alright, you're safe, I'm here."

* * *

At first, Alan thinks he's handling it very well, considering.

He's known this has been coming for most of the last year. It's been flashing at him like a neon sign at every board meeting, with every memo that somehow never reaches his desk, every fire-or-hire decision or project funding proposal made behind his back. He knows it was half the reason the board put all their weight behind the petition to declare Kevin Flynn's death in absentia. Knowing it was coming, however, doesn't do anything to blunt the sense of betrayal.

"You're asking me to resign," he states, flatly. Not a question.

"I'm asking you to do the smart thing, Alan. For yourself," Hardington replies. "We both know this isn't the right position for you. You're aprogrammer, Alan, one of the best Encom's ever had, and maybe one of the best in the country. You were never an executive, and it wasn't fair of Flynn to force you into this position in the first place."

"Flynn never _forced_ me into anything," Alan fires back, making a heroic effort to keep his voice level. "I stepped into this position because the company needed me to."

"And you've done a fantastic job. Far above and beyond the call of duty. But now it's time to take Encom in a new direction if it's going to have a future." Hardington looks at him with a mixture of concern and smug condescension that makes Alan feel like snarling. "I know how hard this has been for you. But Flynn's gone, Alan, and you're running yourself into the ground trying to be him. Look at you…you've lost God knows how many pounds and you've got circles under your eyes a panda would envy. Can't you see I'm trying to do you a favor, here? I'm trying to give you a chance to be _yourself_ again, to go back to doing what you do best. I can't imagine Flynn wouldn't want that for you." He lays a heavy hand on Alan's shoulder.

"What I do best," he repeats softly.

"Look, Alan, the board's already voted. But it doesn't have to be official. We can cut through all the bureaucratic bullshit and…"

Alan doesn't hear any of the rest.

Something strange is happening to him. His heart is racing, but his blood feels as though it's turned to ice. All sound is muffled, but his vision has sharpened to a surreal, impossible clarity. He's aware of every inch of space around him, every vector of movement, every possible escape route. Most of all, he's aware of Hardington, and how easy it would be in that moment to wipe that arrogant, insufferable expression of false concern off his face forever. He is, after all, standing solidly between Hardington and the closed door.

He has no weapons, but that's alright. He's never truly needed them.

_Oh Jesus Christ what is happening to me_, Alan thinks, and the thought seems to come from a thousand lightyears away.

He has to get out of here. If he doesn't, he's going to snap. He can feel himself seesawing violently between horror at himself and that icy, alien rage, and he wonders if this is what a nervous breakdown feels like.

"Think about it, Alan," Hardington finishes, but before the last word is even out of his mouth Alan's moving, tearing away from the hand on his shoulder and practically throwing himself out the door.

* * *

The executive bathroom is private, thank God, and Alan locks himself in.

For a while he simply leans back against the door, pulling off his glasses and squeezing his eyes shut in an effort to get himself back under control. But that just makes it worse, makes the images (_Hardington's body pinned beneath him, his hands locked around the bastard's throat, bone and cartilage cracking and collapsing beneath his fingers_) stand out brighter against the black backdrop of his closed eyelids.

He stumbles to the sink on shaking legs and splashes cold water on his face, forcing himself to breathe in slow, soft inhales and long, flat exhales because that's what always seems to work best, trying to make the runaway beat of his heart match the much calmer rhythm of his breathing. Finally it starts to work, and Alan shudders in relief. But then he catches sight of his reflection in the mirror—pale face and shadowed eyes and too-prominent cheekbones—and suddenly the adrenaline surges through him again, and before he even understands what he's doing he's driven his fist into the mirror with a hoarse, ragged cry of rage.

The world goes blessedly grey for a moment.

When Alan comes back to himself he's still slumped against the counter, braced on one hand. There's a great round spiderweb of cracks in the mirror now, obliterating one of his reflection's eyes and warping and distorting one side of his face. His other hand hurts like hell; Alan wonders dully if it's broken.

"Please," Alan whispers, whether to his reflection or God or to the Universe at large, he's not sure. "Please, no more. No more."

* * *

The house is empty when Alan gets home. Lora's gone for the next three days, on her final interview for the position at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. Part of him desperately wishes she was here; the other part is profoundly grateful she isn't here to see him like this. It was hard enough to convince her to take the job in DC as it was. He can't give her another reason to worry about him now.

He sets a pot of coffee to brewing and pulls some ice out of the freezer to make a pack for his swelling left hand. _I had to put my_ good _hand through the goddamn mirror_, he thinks, and emits a strangled noise that might've been a laugh.

For the next few minutes Alan feels almost like he might be settling back towards some semblance of normal, but then something new sets his nerves on edge and his skin crawling. It takes his exhausted mind another five minutes to realize it's the sound of the coffee maker percolating that's doing it, of all things, and he yanks the cord out of the wall violently enough that the entire machine ends up crashing to the floor, sending half-brewed boiling coffee and broken glass everywhere.

He's still staring numbly at it when he hears the front door open.

"Hey, Uncle Alan? You home? Sorry I just let myself in, but I left one of my textbooks over here the other night and you weren't answering the phone, and I saw your car here so I figured…"

Sam Flynn turns the corner into the kitchen and blinks. He looks from Alan's face, to his icepack-covered hand, to the coffee maker's corpse on the floor, and then back up to Alan's face again, with that boggle-eyed expression he gets whenever he encounters something that just doesn't make sense.

"Holy _shit_, Uncle Alan, what happened? Are you okay?"

Alan opens his mouth to answer, but it's simply too much, the final straw. His vision greys out once again, then tunnels all the way to black, and he feels his legs give out underneath him. The last thing Alan hears is Sam's shout as he rushes to catch him.

_"Uncle Alan!"_

* * *

"Alan? Hey, come on, wake up buddy, anybody home…?"

Alan opens his eyes to find himself lying on his living room couch, with Roy Kleinberg perched on its arm next to him, a glass of water in his hand.

"About damn time," Roy says, smiling lopsidedly, the relief in his voice unmistakable. "How're you feeling?"

"Roy…? …what're you…when did you…?" he starts, his voice barely more than a croak.

"Sam called me," Roy answers, pushing himself off the arm of the couch. He kneels next to Alan, helping him sit up and pressing the glass of water into his uninjured hand. "I sent him home a few minutes ago—the kid was damn near hysterical. He thought you'd had a heart attack. Damn near gave _me_ one."

"…'m not so sure I didn't," Alan mutters, draining the glass and nodding gratefully to Roy. "Thanks."

"Alan, how long has it been since you slept?"

"I've been sleeping fine," Alan answers automatically. "Just…had a stressful day."

Roy isn't having it. "Alan Bradley, you are the worst goddamn liar in the world, and you know it, so don't bullshit me. Can you stand?"

Alan thinks about it for a moment, then cautiously stands up from the couch, bracing himself on the arm until the dizziness goes away. "Yeah. I think so."

"Good," Roy says. "Because I'm taking you to the doctor."

He's got Alan in the passenger seat of his beat-up red Honda hatchback before he can properly protest, and by the time they've pulled out of Alan's cul-de-sac Alan is dozing, drifting to the sound of REM playing on Roy's radio.

* * *

The doctor X-rays his hand and diagnoses hairline fractures of his first and second proximal phalanges. He sends Alan home with a cast and prescriptions for painkillers and a new type of sleeping pill called zolpidem, along with an admonition to come back and see him in two weeks if his insomnia hasn't improved.

"Don't worry," Roy assures him. "I'll drag him in here with a chainfall if I have to, and I probably will."

Alan doesn't bother with the painkillers, but he takes the first of the sleeping pills almost as soon as he's sent Roy off, promising to tell him everything tomorrow. He can almost imagine Roy's indignation at the Chairman of the Board's proffered "favor", and the thought actually makes him smile, a little.

He'll never be able to tell him about the rest, though. Alan can't think of anyone he _could_ possibly tell, anyone he could explain it to—he can't even explain what happened today to _himself_—and in those last minutes before the sedative drags him under, Alan has never felt so alone.

* * *

_In his dream he's standing before the broken mirror again, looking into the shattered, distorted face of his reflection._

I'm sorry, _he whispers to the face in the mirror_. I wish I could understand. I want to understand. But I can't. I can't take this anymore. I don't have it in me. I'm sorry.

_The reflection lingers for a few last moments, staring back at him silently through the web of cracks. Alan can almost imagine some emotion in the one visible eye—anger or fear or sorrow—but he can't quite get a handle on it._

_Then the reflection is gone, leaving only the empty glass behind._

* * *

When Alan wakes, his pillow is damp, as if he'd been crying in his sleep. But he can't remember his dream, if indeed he'd had one at all, and the only emotion that comes to him is relief.

* * *

For the next six hundred cycles, Rinzler never breaks his programming again.

* * *

A/N: Lyrics quoted are from "Have You Got it in You", by Imogen Heap


	6. Chasing the Dawn

December 17, 2010

** (20:48) [ZackAttack]** _Hey, kiddo, you all set?_

**(20:48) [HProtagonist89]** _Just about. Marv says hi._

**(20:50) [ZackAttack]** _You've got everything you need?_

**(20:51) [HProtagonist89]** _Yep. Test-ran your worm, no issues, OK to launch_

**(20:53) [ZackAttack]** _What about your gear? You've triple-checked it? Quadruple-checked?_

**(20:54) [HProtagonist89]** _Yes, mom, now would you kindly get off my ass?_

**(20:54) [ZackAttack]** _Just making sure. You know IT would eye-laser the skin right off of me if I didn't look out for you._

**(20:55) [HProtagonist89]** _Calm your tits, okay, I've done this a dozen times. And thanks again, man._

**(20:56) [ZackAttack] **_See you on the news, kiddo._

* * *

**(21:37) [ISOlatedThinker] ** _Pick up your goddamn phone. NOW._

* * *

Roy did, and suddenly everything changed.

* * *

For almost ten minutes after Alan hangs up, all Roy can do is stare blankly at the cel phone in his hand, shellshocked. His mind is racing at a hundred miles per hour and it takes a heroic amount of effort to rein in his thoughts enough for him to get some kind of a hold.

_You can't flip out about this, Roy. It could be anything. Or nothing. Hell it's probably a prank, and man, if I _ever_ find the asshole who'd do that to Alan…_

_But the _timing…

_Coincidence. You have to think about this rationally. You cannot afford to go tinfoil hat, okay? At least not any more than you already have._

_But what if it's not a coincidence? What if it's…what if we really…_

The mass digital pulse experiment had been Flynn Lives' equivalent of SETI—beaming a call into the sky, knowing that no answer was ever likely to come. Even Alan had laughed and shaken his head when Roy told him about it (and Roy had tried bravely to pretend that hadn't stung.) _"Yeah, I guess it is pretty crazy…but you have to admit, it's the kind of thing Kevin would try, right?"_

He knows it's insane. Tinfoil-hat nuts. But despite all his best efforts to keep himself grounded in the aftermath of Alan's revelation about the page, Roy can't help but think of Dr. Ellie Arroway in _Contact_ and the moment when the signal of repeating prime numbers first sounded over the speakers at the VLA…the moment when the stars answered back.

* * *

The first step he takes is to call PacBell and confirm that yes, landline telephone service to 9543 Culver Blvd. is disconnected, and has been since 1991. That means the page was almost certainly a cellular signal, spoofing the arcade's old number. Tracking it down is going to be a trick, but Roy's been in the hacker game for a decade and a half now, and he knows several.

There're several pieces of information Roy needs. He needs to look at Alan's pager service account so he can track the signal back to the cel tower it originated from. He wants to look at Culver City PG&E, too, and the power usage at the arcade. He knows there is electricity to the arcade—Flynn Lives pays the bills, after all—but looking at last month's power bills won't tell him if there was a sudden spike in usage _tonight_, or any time within the last few days.

Hacking all these services and following up on each thread by himself would be a chore, and way too slow for his taste, so Roy sets about fixing up one of his custom-designed search-and-spy programs to do it all at once. He has a friend on the forums who works for Orange County PD's Computer Crimes division, but he doesn't want to contact her with this just yet, even though he knows he could use her help. Maybe it's stupid, but this feels private, somehow. Once he's gotten to the bottom of it, perhaps he'll announce the news to the rest of the organization, but for now, Roy wants to keep it in the family.

He takes a break from his programming a little after midnight to check the news, and sure enough, there's Sam, freefalling off the roof of Encom Tower and vaulting over police cars. _Ladies and gentlemen, Ezio Flynnditore_, he thinks with a grin, before going online to grab a copy of OS12 for future vivisection. One can of Japanese black coffee later (Red Bull is for babies) and he's back to work, and by 1:45 the new-and-improved spybot is done.

Maybe, Roy thinks, he'll even give it a name.

He doesn't know what he's going to find. Maybe the page was a fluke. Maybe it's a malicious prankster, and he and Alan and Lora and Sam can have the pleasure of finding the guy and kicking his ass to El Toro. And maybe, just maybe, it's something more.

_If it really is you, buddy…alive or dead, if it's you out there, trying to drop us a line, help us. Help us find the truth, finally, once and for all. Help us find __you._

No matter what comes with the dawn, he knows everything's changing, and for the first time in years, Roy Kleinberg allows himself to hope.


	7. RedEye

The first thing Alan does after he gets home from Sam's "house" (his Snow Crash Pad, as Roy dubbed it) is call Lora and Roy over Skype. He's not worried about the hour; Roy never sleeps anyway, and he knows Lora's awake even despite the time difference because he's been texting back and forth with her since before the board meeting.

Since the pager went off.

"You sent him down there _alone_?" Lora exclaims in disbelief. "Alan!"

"You know what that part of town's like, man." Roy chimes in. "And it's ass-thirty in the morning. We should have all gone together."

Alan winces. It isn't like those exact thoughts haven't been repeating themselves on loop inside his head since he drove away. Still, he tries to hold his ground, tries to rationalize. "I swung by the arcade before the meeting, right after I got the page…the place is still locked up tight. No sign anyone's been there. And you both know Sam…if I'd suggested we all go with him he would have balked. He's got his cel on him, he knows who to call if there's trouble."

"Knows who to… Alan, have you _met him_?" Lora has that look on her face, the one that says she'd dearly love to reach through the internet and smack him upside the head.

"…if there's anything to find, Sam deserves to be the one to find it." Alan replies softly. "We all promised him." He glances to Roy's screen. "Have you had any luck with the back-trace yet?"

"I'm working on it, but it's _weird_, Alan. It was a wireless signal, and it definitely bounced off the cel tower nearest the arcade, but I can't figure out where the hell it was transmitted from. Whoever sent it is either a spy, a genius, or a ghost."

_Wouldn't that be something_, Alan thinks, and tries to ignore the way his skin is suddenly prickling.

* * *

4:45, and Alan's long since given up on sleep.

He's paced restlessly through the empty house, trying to burn off excess nervous energy, but it doesn't help. He tries to fix himself something to eat, only to find himself staring blankly down at the sandwich for almost five minutes before giving it up as a bad job and pouring himself another cup of coffee, instead.

The feeling has been building since he said goodnight to Lora and Roy, and it isn't just worry for Sam (though he keeps compulsively checking his phone every few minutes), or even his own burning need to know where the page came from and what it means. It's as if someone's set a cattle prod against the base of his spine, the charge set on low but increasing slowly and steadily until the tingle becomes a burn. At one point Alan catches movement out of the corner of his eye and is so startled by his own reflection in the sliding-glass door leading from the kitchen to the patio that he actually jumps. He wants to do something, feels as though he _must_ do something or he's going to break, but he can't (_remember_) figure out _what_ and every action he takes feels wrong somehow.

He checks his Android again. It's only been two hours since his conference call with Lora and Roy, but it feels like years. As if this whole insane night has slowed to a crawl since his old pager suddenly went off…or as if his perception of time has somehow been jacked up to the point that everything around him seems to be moving in syrupy slow-motion. He drags his hands through his hair, fisting them briefly at his temples.

_Dammit Sam. Call me. Tell me what's happening. Or I'm going to lose my mind._

* * *

Alan doesn't realize he's dozed off on the couch until a harsh buzzing from somewhere in front of him snaps him from a hazy, harried dream he can't quite remember (_blinding lights, red on gold, a blow that sends him plummeting into black water with the force of hitting concrete, sinking deeper and deeper and **dammit you've fought this hard this long don't you dare give up now…**_). He focuses his eyes on the coffee table, staring stupidly at it until his head finally clears and he realizes what's happening.

The pager. The pager's going off again.

He doesn't bother getting dressed. He grabs his coat off the hook, throws it on over his t-shirt-and-track-pants pajama ensemble, steps into his jogging shoes, and two minutes later he's out the door, into the breaking dawn.


End file.
